


The last spider in the web

by Schnie



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Evil Mary Morstan, Sad Ending, this is painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 14:59:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9553709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnie/pseuds/Schnie
Summary: After being shot by Mary, Sherlock wakes up in the hospital to an unwanted surprise.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfiction I have written in years, so please bear with me.

The first thing Sherlock noticed was a beeping sound. Then came the pain. It spread from his chest through his entire body and even the small action of opening his eyes seemed impossible. He tried to concentrate on deducing where he was to distract himself from the pain that was apparently not going to go away and after a few minutes his head finally cleared enough to form coherent thoughts.

He had definitely been hurt, there was a needle in his right arm and the beeping sound probably came from a heart monitor. So he was in a hospital, but why? More specifically, why had he been hurt? Had it been a case? And then all the memories suddenly came back to him, like water rushing through a just opened dam. Mary had shot him.  _John's wife_ had shot him. She had secrets and she was dangerous. She could hurt someone else. No, not someone, John. John was the only thing left on Sherlock's mind now. He had to warn him, save him, because if anything happened to John Watson he would never forgive himself.

Once more he struggled to open his eyes, but this time, with John's safety on the line, he was more determined and he accomplished the task after only a few seconds. When the room stopped spinning, he tried to sit up, desperately wanting to get to John, whatever the costs, but the pain was too strong and he fell back onto the pillow.

The moment the detective finally inspected the room he was in, he noticed that John was already here, although being here and being safe seemed to be two entirely different things. He was bound to a chair right in front of Sherlock's hospital bed, a cloth stuffed in his mouth to keep him from screaming. Next to him stood Mary, casually pointing a gun at his temple, apparently waiting for Sherlock to wake up. When she saw he had opened his eyes, she began to speak in an eerily calm voice: "I see you have joined us again." Sherlock ignored her, only looking at John, checking for any injuries, but he appeared to be unharmed. He was dressed in one of his hideous jumpers and didn't look like he was entirely sure what was happening and why, which probably meant he had arrived with Mary shortly before, still believing she was his loving wife. Then she had finally thrown her cover and overwhelmed him.

Mary seemed to have enough of Sherlock not paying any attention to her, so she interrupted his train of thought and began to speak again: "You both appear to be a bit confused about the situation, so I'll gladly fill you in. And yes, both of you are confused. Because you haven't figured it out, have you, Sherlock? Why I'm doing all of this" Her grin became kind of manic and Sherlock looked uneasily to the gun still pointed at John's temple. Was she planning on using that or was it just to get Sherlock riled up? Because if so she was definitely succeeding, judging by his rising anxiety level and the heart monitor now beeping at a significantly faster rate than before. Mary noticed Sherlock's gaze resting on the weapon and pointed her unoccupied hand at the gun. "Are you worried about that? Well, you don't have to be." Despite Sherlock not being sure how serious she was, he could feel the feeling of relieve spreading through his body. And then she finished her sentence and it felt like someone had punched a hole in his stomach. "Not yet anyway. You still need to understand, after all, and sadly I can't stay long after shooting dear John in the head."

Sherlock wanted to believe she was bluffing, but her determined and cold gaze told him she was dead serious and that she had no mercy for him or John. He wanted to scream, but no sound escaped his throat. He wanted to jump up, get John out of her reach, but his limbs felt heavy as stone and he couldn't move a finger. All he could do was lie there and watch the events unfold. Mary looked pleased about him staying silent and carried on: "I think it is clear that John is dead the moment you try to alert anyone in this hospital. And without you screaming, no one will enter this room until I am long gone, I made sure of that. Of course, John will die anyway, whatever you do, the only difference will be you not knowing the reason of his death. And believe me, I would make sure you would never find out, could never deduce it, so that the question would haunt you until the end of your life." Seeing as Sherlock was in no state to utter a single word, this wasn't a particularly hard task. His eyes assessed John, trying to determine his state of mind. He didn't struggle, seemingly resigned to his fate, silent tears running down his cheeks. Sherlock desperately wanted to run over to John, brush those tears away, regardless of what John would think about this probably not very platonic sign of affection, and reassure him that he would do everything in his power to get them out of this, but he couldn't. His body was rendered useless and the only hope he had was Mary finding one last bit of compassion for her husband. 

"You know, I knew exactly what you were doing these last two years that you've been gone. Dismantling Moriarty's network bit by bit, ripping his web to shreds. But you don't really think that you managed to completely destroy it, do you? After all, you missed the second most important spider in the web after Moriarty himself. His right-hand man. Or should I say his right-hand woman?" A choked sob escaped John's mouth, muffled by the cloth, and Mary pressed the gun harder against his temple. Looking at John with a fake sympathetic expression, Mary said: "Did you really think I actually loved you? You were a mess when I met you, pining after your dead flatmate. Who the hell would fall in love with that? Meeting you, faking a relationship, even going so far as to marry you, it was all a plan. To get to Sherlock. He got to some very important people of Jim's organisation, even got Jim to kill himself on that rooftop, and because of that he had to pay. And I knew exactly how to do it. Because what would destroy Sherlock Holmes more than coming home after two years of risking his life to save John Watson and finding out that his only friend, whom he had sacrificed everything for, had moved on? That he had learned to live with the idea of him being gone, even going so far as to propose to his new girlfriend." Her look became more and more crazed as she continued talking and her hand holding the gun began to tremble slightly. "But that wasn't enough. I needed you to actually fall for my trick, believing with every part of your being that it would never be just you and John again. Believing that I was a fixed part of your entity now. The duo becoming a trio, with you always at least partly on the sidelines, seeing John and I were married. I needed you to believe that, so you wouldn't see this coming. Like I didn't see Jim's death coming. You see, I adored him. He taught me everything I know, he was always there for me and if it wasn't for you, he would still be alive. You took the most important person in my life from me, so I'm gonna take yours!"

And before Sherlock could realize that her story had come to an end, she pulled the trigger.

Everything went black around Sherlock, a ringing noise appeared in his brain. I felt like his whole world had stopped and been turned on its axis, nothing would ever be the same again. The pain in his chest from the gunshot wound felt like nothing compared to the sheer agony he was experiencing now. It went deeper than his bones, making his heart ache painfully. He didn't know where he took the strength from, but when his sight began to clear again, he stood up on shaking legs. Mary had apparently left already, she was nowhere to be seen. Sherlock hobbled over to John, who had fallen down on the floor, blood pooling around his head. The detective feel to his knees beside John's lifeless body, desperately clutching at his face to get some kind of reaction, anything. Rationally he knew this was pointless, but his heart just couldn't accept the possibility of John not being there any more. Tears were streaming down his face, falling on John's cheeks and mixing with the now dried tears he had shed before his death, as Sherlock tried to find a sign of life in his friend's unfocused eyes. His body shook with uncontrollable sobs and he curled himself around John's form, his head lying on John's chest, noticing the gaping nothingness where a heartbeat should be.

"I love you", he whispered. "I love you and I could never tell you. I always wanted to, but I was so scared you would hate me. You not reciprocating my feelings always seemed a given for me. And now it's too late to be brave, to actually find out if there could have been something more between us." After that the only words Sherlock managed to say were broken 'I love you's, only interrupted by sobs heaving through his body, for he knew that from now on it would be only Sherlock Holmes, the detective living in 221B Baker Street, without anyone else until he day he died.


End file.
